Eating during a pandemic

On Sunday, for Mother’s Day, I felt like a fry-up and since all the restaurants and cafés were closed we made something at home.

We had mushrooms, baked beans, toast, vegan sausages, spinach, my home-made sauerkraut, and vegan black pudding. The black pudding is made by The Bury Black Pudding Company and contains black beans. It’s really delicious and you can buy it on their website.

This morning I received an email from the city council to say I would not be able to go to the allotment. However, Michael Gove announced today that, “people would be allowed to run, walk or go to an allotment, but not to do more social activities, such as playing golf”.

I have kale at my allotment that I can harvest so it seems a bit silly when there’s a shortage of fresh food at the supermarket to insist I go to a busy supermarket with lots of people in a confined space so that I can buy kale rather than cycle alone to my allotment where I can pick kale in a huge open space far away from anyone else with the added benefit of reducing the burden on our food supply. Hopefully, sense will prevail.

The other conundrum is they say to go as infrequently to the supermarket as possible. I used to never go to the supermarket. I hate them. But I now have to go to the shops to get groceries and you can’t buy for a family of four for several weeks and stick within the quantity restrictions. For instance, we eat three loaves of bread in one week and you can only get three of one thing. I feel sorry for families larger than ours. We’re also on foot or bike and so I only buy as much as I can carry. This means I need to get small amounts a couple of times a week. I will try to avoid the supermarkets as much as possible and stick with Foodstory and Bonobo. Foodstory and Bonobo are also managing the pandemic much better than the big supermarkets. There are people everywhere in the supermarkets and it’s hard to maintain a 2m distance. Today I picked up some groceries I’d ordered from Bonobo and they put my order in a small room that’s accessible from the outside. They unlocked the door and left the room so I could go in alone and collect my groceries. It was quite amazing and so well set up. I’m so impressed with these small cafés adapting so quickly in challenging times.